D&D General Greyhawk Humanocentricism?

[Parmandur]

Really? Dwarves live in large communities. Elves have all sorts of cities, the drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu being a prime example. Orcs live in large communities as do most goblinoids.

Somewhat large, and those are hinted at in the Mpuntains or Forest descriptions: but in the original vision of Greyhawk, they aren't building major urban centers, but clan holds in the hills and mountains or tree-friendly communities.
I'm not saying it absolutely has to be that way, but it is consistent in the original version: Humans are the urbanizers and the empire builders.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean no agenda beyond the question. I tend to find Spock no different than a human raised in a particular culture 90% of the time. And Chewbacca is literally the family dog if dogs could be 7 ft bipedal mechanics. I don't find them hard to relate to any more than I find people from other cultures or even other social groups hard to relate to. This is because every Sci Fi or fantasy race ever still has to be fundamentally human because they are being written for humans by humans and we cannot escape our own limited perceptions. We can't imagine sentience beyond what human sentience looks like. In that lens a dragonborn or a dalek are both humans with exaggerated features used to identify them. There is no race in fantasy or sci-fi you could not replace with humans and not have them still make some sort of sense.

Which is why I asked, because to me, they are all humans in Halloween costumes because we cannot create anything that isn't.

They aren't that to me. I take demonstrated differences seriously, and try to live in the setting as much as possible. Making that attempt is what roleplaying means to me.

I don't see anything wrong with relatability sometimes being an issue that people have. If anything, having every PC and NPC basically be the same like you're saying feels unusual to me, like you're portraying a chess piece.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@Micah Sweet your argument mostly seems to boil down to 'elves and dwarves are more relatable because they're familiar to us' i would refute this stance with: because they are familiar we overlook the ways in which they are actually fundamentally different and less relatable-a warped perspective of timescale, especially when compared to a dragonborn or a wookie who's unrelatability mostly comes from their appearance or a language barrier, an ultimately less meaningful differentiator.

or to put it another way, IMO if every human was suddenly turned into a dragon-person it would most likely affect human society far less than if we all started living to 700.

I also said there are myriad examples of dwarven and elven cultures in fiction, so there is something to go on. I think examples matter.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think a lot of this debate comes down to a taste preference on how mundane vs fantastical you like your fantasy. It's part of the same spectrum that determines how magical you like classes and how strange you like monsters. I feel the OS movement is partially popular on the fact that it caters to those who prefer mundane fantasy (human looking races, low or no magic classes, traditional fantasy creatures) vs modern D&D (and it's offshoots like PF) which caters to fantastical species, highly magical or supernatural classes, and truly weird monsters).

I certainly can't deny that, but I also don't see anything wrong with feeling that way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Even so, almost every D&D species is essentially human in design. A head, two and legs, basic anatomy, normal physical necessities for food, water, air and sleep. The exceptions are the truly weird things like plasmoids or warforged and even they still end up with basic human shapes. And it's not like D&D has gone out of its way when it says "what if cat, but human-like?" (Replace cat with any number of animal and fantasy creatures and repeat). Hell, I'd wager a tabaxi is easier to understand than an elf is because getting into the mindset of an immortal creature requires thought, wondering what my cat would do if it could talk is something every pet owner does.

If you're right, don't you think this wouldn't be an issue for anyone? Reality of what people have claimed and believe seems to go against what you're suggesting.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Maybe it's not edition warring so much as traditional fantasy vs new fantasy. I mean imaginary worlds can have any creatures you want to make up in them. But there are flavors and feels with any combo and some like it one way and others like it another. So I don't discount that there might be someone edition warring, I'd argue the vast majority just like a traditional Tolkienesque and it's not really edition warring at all.

"Traditional vs new" literally is an edition warring point. Even when the "tradition" is less than a decade old.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you're right, don't you think this wouldn't be an issue for anyone? Reality of what people have claimed and believe seems to go against what you're suggesting.

Their point shows that it isn't actually relatability, as in the inherent nature of the creature being described. It is, instead, purely within the heart and mind of the speaker: this is unfamiliar, so I can't relate; this is not long-established, so I can't relate; this is too monstrous, so I can't relate; etc.

Which is precisely what creates the infuriating catch-22 that Hussar, myself, and others have described: anything novel is "unrelatable," that is, unfamiliar so it won't ever get the chance to be displayed, so it can't develop new tradition, so it can't become familiar(=relatable). And thus we are stuck with damn near every setting being massively humanocentric. Folks mentioned BG3 earlier, and frankly, it's goddamn hilarious anyone thinks that such a setting isn't humanocentric. The vast majority of characters you deal with are human, elf/half-elf, dwarf, or halfling, other than the tiefling refugees...and the fact that they're tiefling refugees is very specifically used against them by racist buttholes in-game. (While the writers do make it pretty clear that this is an immoral and bigoted thing to do, many such racist jerks get away with it without any repercussions whatsoever.) Faerûn is absolutely a humanocentric setting, it's just soft humanocentrism rather than the much harder and active, overt humanocentrism of Greyhawk.

You see both of these things, the conflation of inherent nature with personal response and the catch-22 effect, applied to all sorts of things in the D&D space. It's deeply infuriating.

 

[Remathilis]

I also said there are myriad examples of dwarven and elven cultures in fiction, so there is something to go on. I think examples matter.

I mean, cat people are equally prolific. Khajitt, Thundecats, Leonin, the list is massive.

Cat Folk - TV Tropes

Cat Folk are Fantastic Sapient Species that are based on felines. They generally have a body type resembling felines to one degree or another, and are sometimes named after Real Life feline species. They can be science-fiction aliens or fantasy …

tvtropes.org

So I don't think it's just the myriad of examples that are separating elves and tabaxi.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I mean, cat people are equally prolific. Khajitt, Thundecats, Leonin, the list is massive.

Cat Folk - TV Tropes

Cat Folk are Fantastic Sapient Species that are based on felines. They generally have a body type resembling felines to one degree or another, and are sometimes named after Real Life feline species. They can be science-fiction aliens or fantasy …

tvtropes.org

So I don't think it's just the myriad of examples that are separating elves and tabaxi.

And lizardfolk or other reptilian humanoids are both literally and figuratively ancient, as well as showing up in all sorts of places in modern work (e.g. EQ's iksar, TES's argonians). Heck, draconians from Dragonlance even got multiple semi-heroic characters and complex presentations in the novels.

It's not the existence of examples. It's the fact that the examples aren't Tolkien or (to a much more limited extent) other writers who published their work at least 70 years ago but no more than ~110 years ago.

 

[Remathilis]

And lizardfolk or other reptilian humanoids are both literally and figuratively ancient, as well as showing up in all sorts of places in modern work (e.g. EQ's iksar, TES's argonians). Heck, draconians from Dragonlance even got multiple semi-heroic characters and complex presentations in the novels.

It's not the existence of examples. It's the fact that the examples aren't Tolkien or (to a much more limited extent) other writers who published their work at least 70 years ago but no more than ~110 years ago.

I don't just think it's just Tolkien, I think it's the fact that they are not humans with one physical difference (pointed ears, short legs, big noses, etc). I honestly think there is a an unconscious bias that says they look like a human, therefore relatable while a cat or lizard man looks animal/monstrous and is not.